Magnetic field of the earth, yield your bombs. Spit them out. Regrow the limbs. Identification papers back in the jacket. Tanks reversed, tracking backward. Children tucked back into their beds.

BUT AS STRANGERS ARE POTENTIAL ENEMIES AS WELL AS GUESTS, THE WORD HAS A FORKED PATH.

One Hundred Days in the Cave

One Hundred Days in the Cave

The person looking for a fixed identity is often the same person looking for God (escape into emptiness).

—Fanny Howe, The Winter Sun

This empty (escape) room burns my (fixed) bonds.

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According to radiocarbon dating, humans have been present on the Korean peninsula since about 40,000 BCE. It seems that art, or decoration at least, did not exist until 4,000 BCE when the inhabitants of the peninsula began making pottery with comb patterns scraped or scratched into the clay before it hardened.

Clans were absorbed into other clans. Fishing, farming, and hunting.

The introduction of metal from the Han civilization brought with it improved farming and an ability to make visible social hierarchies through the production of symbols of power such as dolmens (burial chambers).

And also through the production of more effective weapons.

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Earl of Wind, Master of Rain, and Master of Clouds.

The Bear and the Tiger.

These were worshipped by the natives before being replaced by sun worship.

Metal equaled power.

Bronze daggers, iron mirrors.

Other forms of reverence were smashed and swept away.

With the Bronze Age came the Koreans’ foundation myth and, with it, a justification of theocracy.

*

Koreans, according to their creation myth, are descended from a male god and a female bear.

Korea’s only indigenous religion is Shamanism, [which] is connected to the beliefs of tribes in Siberia. Shamanism is the belief that everything in nature has a spirit. The human world and the spirit world must be in harmony. A shaman has the ability to communicate with the spirit world.

According to the [creation] myth, Tan-gun [the grandson of the King of Heaven and a bear-transformed-into-a-woman] founded Choson [known as Korea in English] in 2333 BCE. Interestingly, historians also use that date as the beginning of the nation. However, the first people to settle in the Korean peninsula were probably from the Ural Altaic region.

Archaeologists have discovered artifacts in Korea that reflect the beliefs of Siberian Shamanism. Numerous golden crowns that have been found in Asian tombs have artistic motifs like those worn by shamans. For example, Tan-gun was born under a birch tree. Some tribes in Siberia believe that the birch tree is like the sacred World Tree in Norse mythology. The marriage of Tan-gun’s parents may be interpreted as the union of two different tribes that ultimately create a new kingdom. Tan-gun’s father’s heavenly origin contrasts with his mother’s ancestry as bear. David A. Mason, author of Spirit of the Mountains, thinks this may be understood as a Heaven-worshipping tribe (invaders from Siberia?) absorbing a less-developed bear totem tribe (in ancient Manchuria).2